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le War and Slavery ; and their Kelations to each other. 
A 




DISCOURSE, 




DEMVF.llED IN 

1 




THE OLD SOUTH CHURCH, 




READING, MASS. 




DECEMBER 28, 1862. 




BY REV. WILLIAM BARROWS. 




PUBLISHED BY REQUEST. 




BOSTON: 

JOHN M. WIIITTEMORE & CO., lU WASHINGTON STREET. 
18G3. 



The War and Slavery ; and their Eelations to each other. 



DISCOURSE, 



DELIVERED IN 



THE OLD SOUTH CHIJROH, 



READING, MASS. 



DECEMBER 28, 1862. 



BY REV. WILLIAM BARROWS, 



PUBLISHED BY REQUEST. 



BOSTON: 

JOHN M. WHITTEMORE & CO., lli WASHINGTON STREET. 
1863. 



£ ^^\ 



>^ ^7£ 



♦'Reverend Sirs: — ^Yhen we contemplate the fricndsliip and assistance our 
ancestors, the first settlers of this province (while overwhelmed with distress), 
received from the pious pastors of the churches of Christ, who, to enjoy the 
rights of conscience, fled ■with them mto this land, then a savage wilderness, we 
find ourselves filled with the most grateful sensations. And we cannot but 
acknowledge the goodness of Heaven in constantly supplying us with preachers 
of the gospel, whose concern has been the temporal and spiritual happiness of 
tliis people. 

"In a day like this, when all the friends of civil and religious hberty are excit- 
ing themselves to dehver this country from its present calamities, we cannot but 
place great hopes in an order of men who have ever distinguished themselves in 
their country's cause ; and do, therefore, recommend to the ministers of the 
gospel in the several towns and other places in the colony, that they assist us 
* * * * Ijy advising the people of their several congregations," etc. 

" Resolved, That the foregoing Address be presented to all the ministers of the 
gospel in the Pro^-ince." — First Provincial Congress of Massachusetts, 1774, 



JO 

,5> 



D I S C U K S E . 



MATTHEW XVI. 3. 

CAN YE NOT DISCERN THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES ? 

" The signs of the times " are the providences of God. They 
are his purposes wrought out into human history, and his plans fore- 
shadowed by human movements. These signs God gives singly and 
collectively. Each year they constitute a volume, a divine annual, of 
new and unwritten revelation. We are just now receiving another of 
these volumes at the divine hand. Among " the signs of the times '' 
which it embraces, are certain marked events in our national history 
for another year, our present condition and threatening future. These 
" signs," of a national impoi't,! propose as our lesson for this occasion. 
My theme, therefore, is, 

THE WAR AXD SLAVERY ; AND THEIR RELATIONS TO EACH OTHER. 

The progress of this war has been developing new light on our 
relations to foreign nations, and on the real point or points at issue 
between the North and the South. On this new light I now propose 
to say some things that you Avill all, probably, be glad to hear, and 
some other things that I presume it will not be so popular for me to 
say, as profitable for you to hear. But it has ever been a principle 
with me, in my professional and public utterances, to say what I sup- 
pose my hearers ought to hear, rather than what they would like to 
hear. If other ministers of the gospel incline to put their present 
popularity before the permanent profit and prosperity of their society, 
state, or country, I do not incline to follow them. I both pity and 
abhor the man, in a pulpit, who reminds you of the very gracious and 
accommodating clerk behind the counter, saying, " "What would you 
like to-day ? " 

I am painfully aware that I am about to say some things that you 
will be sorry to hear me say ; yet things, as I think, that your chil- 



dren aud mine will be .sorry were not said earlier, and more abun- 
dantly, and with more saving elloct. 

THE rEOPLi: ARK IX A MOOD TO IIKAU SOMETHING >;E>V AND TRUER. 

The public mind is fast coming into a mood to believe that we are 
somewhere laboring under a great mistake. It is felt to be a most 
expensive mistake as to wealtli and public industry, in the avocations 
of peace, and the multitude of men, and the terrible sacrifice of life. 
Some fix the mistake in one tiling, and some in another. In this 
state of feeling, there is a growing Avillingness to hear something 
possibly truer. I feel the need of some profounder thinking, by our 
leading men and by the controlling masses, than we have been having 
on the excited platform and in the l)oisterous harangue. If ever a 
nation was called of God to review its steps and revise its position 
with an awful calmness, we now are. Else v\^e may throw away this 
nation, on a theory three, or five, or thirty years old. And in these 
hurrying times, when we are making history so fast, five years are 
more than a generation. The opinions of three years ago are half a 
century old, and perhaps obsolete. If, then, I state opinions, in the 
deep convictions of the duty I owe to a Christian nation, and to the 
very cause of Christianity itself, and opinions shaped by three years' 
residence in the slave States, that do not coincide Avith yours, I ask 
only the forbearance that is due to any earnest and profound thought, 
in this hour of our country's extreme peril. 

SHALL DISCUSS SLAVERY ONLY IN ITS RELATIONS TO THE WAR. 

And here I may as well add another pi-eliminary remark and word 
of caution. I am about to speak more or less of Slavery. But it is 
not my puqjose now to examine and treat of the demerits, evils and 
sin of the system. I mean to speak of it only as related to the war, 
and so unfold the policy I think we should pursue toward it while 
wanting the war. So far as I speak of it, I intend to do it under this 
question : How shall we treat slavery, under the rebellion, so as 
soonest and best to put down the rebellion and restore the majesty of 
our Government. If, then, I do not say as much on the curse of 
slavery, and on its abolition, as some may wisli or expect, let it be 
remembered that my question confines me to speak of slavery only as 
related to the war, and our national policy toward it in that respect. 

If, after this explanation and limitation of my theme, I do not say, 
on some other feature or relation of shivery, what some may wish, 
and so be called by some UMj)opular name or epithet, it will be a matter 
of regret to me, though of no serious moment. The time was when I 
wa» eensitivG about puch treatment, but it was a time nearer to my 



childhood. It was, you -will remember, no popular remark at the 
time for me to make, when our war opened, and sixty and ninety days 
were set for its conclusion, that it Avould take three years or more from 
the election of our present Chief Magistrate. I think that no one has 
lately found fault with me for that saying. I was once derided, with 
a great many wiser and better men, for trying to " save the Union." 
Still I kept on in my humble and quiet way, and now I have eight 
hundred thousand fighting men, and twenty millions of private citizens 
in my " Union-saving party." Calling names because one does not 
agree to your policy is the short logic, and very short-lived, of the men 
of few facts and feeble reasons. An honorable opponent will reply by 
arguments instead of epithets ; and a man who is right, can aUbrd to 
wait till the hard names applied to him are forgotten. 

SLAVERY ITSELF, AND BY ITSELF. 

As to slavery itself, and aside from the war, such are its evils in 
my estimation, and so anxious should we be for its abolition, that I 
think all the Christian energies of this nation should be bowed to the 
task of removing it in the speediest and best possible way. As I 
believe in the gospel, I believe it cannot and ought not to stand 
before it. 

POLITICAL PREACHING. 

Some one may think I am meddling with politics, and taking them 
into the pulpit. It is possible. Politics sometimes become so inter- 
woven with the themes and works of practical Christianity, that when 
they are taken into the pulpit, politics will follow. But in all serious- 
ness, what is practical Christianity, if it has not something to say on 
this vast expenditure of treasure, this calling away of our husbands 
and sons, and fathers and brothers, this dwarfing of Christian enter- 
prises and filling of hospitals, and this making so many fair fields a 
Golgotha ? Must the life-blood of a Christian nation be drained off 
at every vein, and the pulpit have nothing to say about it ? May the 
destiny of a great Christian Republic be in peril, and monopolized by 
the caucus, the platform, and the legislative hall? And may the 
Christian ministry come no nearer to the war in their professional 
ministrations, than to preach funeral sermons for our slain, and offer 
prayer for their Avidows and orphans ? Men do not mean so much as 
this, when they object to "political preaching" on the war. They 
mean only that the pulpit must not speak against their peculiar views. 
It is not political, unless against their opinions. This is not generous. 

I have said that there are signs of the times, domestic and foreign, 
as related to the war. Sometimes Providence shows a sign by creating 
a fact, and sometimes by simply uncovering and revealing a preexist- 



ing one. It has showa a " sign" by this latter process, in our foreign 
relations. That sign is the revelation of 



THE ANTI-SLAVERY OF THE ENGLISH NATION. 

We have been for many years iiudcr the teaching, if not belief, that 
the Christian world is opposed to slavery. This has been said, and 
by many supposed to be the settled conviction, of the leading nations 
now on tiie stage. Especially have we been instructed to attribute 
this feeling to Great Britain. Philanthropy and Christianity have 
been regarded as so combined there, that an American could not 
travel in those islands without being under a silent if not uttered and 
pointed reproach. If he would stand on the platform of Exeter 
Hall, he must first expurgate himself from the sin of slavery ; if he 
would preach the gospel in an English pulpit, he must first say that 
he is ashamed of his nationality ; if he would sit in an Evangelical 
Alliance of all Christendom, he must first break faith and oath with 
one-half the Union of States from which he hailed ; if he would be 
the guest of some feudal Lord or Duchess, he must first say what 
ought to blister the lips of an American when he utters it. 

Vie, a simple folk, were told to take this as evidence that the mil- 
lennium was at the door, with England at the lead, carrying in India, 
the East India Company, and all the Chinese whom she Avas sancti- 
fying by her opium war. Indeed, we were hurried iip by the assur- 
ance that the millennial door might be closed on us and we left out 
wholly, because of slavery. So was England pressing her " eternal" 
principles to crush " the sum of all villanies," and hastening the march 
of Christian and philanthropic progress in the nineteenth century. 

A change comes over us. The slaveholding States of our Union 
enter into a huge revolt and rebellion, that they may separate them- 
selves from the National Government, and found a new and separate 
one, whose very foundations are, by their confession, to be African 
bones. What a noble opportunity for English philanthropy to speak 
out on American slavery ! She does stir, in court and cabinet. To 
assure us of her hostility to a slaveholders' rebellion, and of all the 
moral and physical aid she can give and we wish, now to make an end 
of the vast sin ? Not at all ; but to be in haste to acknowledge this 
nascent slave empire as " belligerents," and so put them on a good 
fighting basis. We arrest slave ambassadors and dispatches on one of 
her decks. Does she wink at the irregularity, that she and we together 
may strike an enormity ? Not at all. Arsenals, dock-yards and the 
royal navy are astir, and Canada bristles with thousands of new 
bayonets, that slavery may ride the sea wherever "Britannia rules the 
wave." We blockade slave-ports to cripple a system of iniquity that 



seeks to renew its youtli in the new crime of rebellion and separation. 
Does England remember her own antecedents, and allow us to adopt 
them ; or, considering the great moral stake, and the great good we 
have an opportunity of doing for anti-slavery, docs she allow us to 
make precedents ? Not at all ; the English lion growls that we should 
use the law of nations to deliver the African lambs that he has so 
long, and so deeply, and so cheaply pitied. So intense had English 
desire been to " wipe out " what she esteemed the foulest blot on the 
century, and so usher in the millennium, that we looked to see every- 
thing English give the cold hand and a stern eye to anything favoring 
the slave rebellion. But lo ! the current of her feeling and activity is 
found to run quite the other way. A new sign of the times, indeed, 
and easily discerned ! Our Government utters the word " Emanci- 
pation," and in such circumstances that we could suppose the English 
would hail it as the one word of the nineteenth century. Does she 
compute at once and proclaim the number of "■ chattels," made men 
by the word ? She only tells the world, in doleful tones, how many 
spindles are stopped at Manchester ! We gain a noble victory, over 
rebel slaveholders, and the first English comment is — the high price 
of cotton ! 

" Slaves cannot breathe in England ; if their lungs 
Receive our air, that moment they are free ; 
They touch our country, and their shackles fall. 
That 's noble, and bespeaks a nation proud 
And jealous of the blessing." 

" That 's noble" — in a book, and there are some other things to be 
put in the book of history, not so " noble." Is it not time for some 
English house to issue a new and expurgated edition of Cowper, 
bringing it doiv7i to their present times.* 



* We admit that in the present posture of affairs, if England allows shipment of 
the munitions of war and other supplies of aid and comfort to a Union, she must also 
to a Confederate port, since the Confederates are acknowledged as " belligerents," 
and so have a status to demand such comity. But who elevated mere rebels to the 
advantageous position of " belligerents," and so gave them so much vantage-grouud ? 
We also concede that England had the law on her side in the Trent affair. But 
cannot nations as well as men wink at the irregular achievement of a great good, 
when they wish to sec the good done ? If, in the chase, a polar bear take refuge on 
the quarter-deck of Dr. Kane's vessel, and the Esquimaux hunter follows him up, the 
Doctor has doubtless the law of nations on his side to order the hunter off and demand 
an apology. But if he exercises all these rights, and lands the bear safely on some 
iceberg, the suspicion will arise that, aside from questions of dignity and law, there 
was a pleasant understanding between him and the bear. 

And very like it will be but just to distinguish between the sympathies of the 
English Government, and the sympathies of English anti-slavery, in regard to our- 
selves in this struggle. Credit is doubtless due to the latter from us, even though we 
may esteem their feeling as better than their judgment, in respect to our affairs. 



SLAVERY IS NOT THE MAIN CAUSE OF THE WAR. 

It is the popular impression that slavery is the cause of the rebel- 
lion, and that the present conflict, in its last analysis, is a conflict 
between freedom and slavery. So it is said, If there had been no 
slavery, there would have been no war ; and if slavery is done away, 
the war will cease. 

I think the cause lies deeper. Thirty years' talking on the vast 
curse of slavery — and we have never overestimated it — has made 
the popular impression that any great national evil, among us, can 
spring from nothing but slavery. This is a popular delusion. For 
there have been civil wars and revolutions when there was no slavery 
for a cause. So this one may spring from another cause. The con- 
flict, so far as labor is concerned, lies not, I think, between free and 
slave labor, but between the products of the two. Ours is a manu- 
facturing, theirs is an agricultural interest. We both wish foreign 
trade. But national legislation that will protect the one, will expose 
the other. They Avish to sell high and buy cheap. We wish to do 
the same. But what one section wishes to sell, the other wishes to 
buy, and vice versa. If Congress protects Southern products by a 
duty on the same when imported, it makes those articles higher for 
us ; if it protects our manufactures by a duty on the same when 
imported, it makes them higher for the South. Hence there is a 
contest, not between free and slave labor, but between the products of 
the two. No amount of fighting will adjust that difficulty. For it is 
a difficulty inherent in our differences of latitude, and, consequently, 
of natural products. Freeing the slave will be no remedy, since the 
products of the two sections of country will remain the same. So, 
after all, legislation, and not the sword, must settle it, so far as pro- 
ducts and prices are concerned. Change all the slave to free labor 
to-day, and we are just as much at variance on this part of our diffi- 
culty. The idea, therefore, that the removal of slavery will make us 
one, is a delusion. Such a remedy does not strike deep enough. 

SLAVERY A MEANS, NOT A CAUSE OF THE WAR. 

I agree that the South has made the slavery question the ostensible 
cause of the rebellion. But only because it was the most available 
question on which they could raise an issue and make an appeal to 
arms. No one thing Avould so readily and totally consolidate them in 
this struggle. So I doubt not they rejoice that we have made so 
much of slavery, and are joining issue with them on it, rather than 
on the rebellion itself. They cannot struggle for independence Avith 
half the force with which they can rally to fight emancipation. It is 
as the doubling of their army, if it can be believed through the South 



that this is a war for emancipation. So when our public men men- 
tion slavery and emancipation ten times, and rebellion but once, they 
render good recruiting service for the Southern army. At the same 
time we are pressing a measure that is in no way adapted to remove 
our difficulties, even if perfectly successful, and every slave freed. 
The philosophy of the caucus and the platform and the politician does 
not appreciate our difficulties. 



OTHER CAUSES. 

There is another cause of the rebellion, lying far deeper than 
slavery, and of which indeed slavery is but a fruit. The type of 
Southern civilization is feudal and mediaeval, and so is averse to 
republicanism. It is in the Colonial blood of the South, being more 
Norman than Saxon, to have a government of aristocracy, oligarchy, 
or monarchy. The temper and preference of the South do not favor 
democracy and the masses. A common and equal interest for all the 
whites, as our common school system, cannot be made popular there 
■with the governing class. Their feelings partake more of the families 
of the lords and barons of ante-colonial times, of Avhich so many of 
the Southern colonists were offshoots. So they have little sympathy 
Avith the genius of our Government, as a Government of democracy 
and equality, according to our Northern interpretation and use of it. 
They spurn vulgar contact Avith the great Avorking class. So Roo-er 
Sherman, who left a shoemaker's bench for a seat in Congress, Avas 
sneered at bj^ Randolph for having Avorn a leather-apron. The ansAver 
he returned Avas most fitting. This Southern feeling has been very 
strong, and one of the strongest elements in producing the rebellion. 
They have long w^ished a government separate from our Northern 
theory and practice of fraternity and equality ; wdiich feeling the 
removal of slavery cannot remove, making them homogeneous and 
cordial Avith us. It is Avith them an inbred and hereditary national 
characteristic, and cannot be Avisely ignored or slighted, Avhile Ave 
attempt to conquer a peace and restore amity.* 

NEAV LIGHT ON Ai; OLD QUESTION. 

As the AA-ar has progressed, Ave have progressed in our knowledge 
of the slave, his condition, his relations to the war, his wishes, and 
his probable future. Concerning him there has been a general dis- 
appointment, and this has been joyful or sad, according to the previous 

* Says the Richmond Enquirer : " The experiment of universal liberty has failed ; 
the evils cf free society are insufferable ; free society is impracticable in the long 
run ; it is every where starving, demoraHzed and insurrectionary." 



10 

theories of men and the type of their philanthropy. lu all this terrible 
struggle, the slaves have been strangely quiet. This cannot have 
arisen from ignorance of national policy and acts, Korth and South. 
They have probably been as well informed of the leading measures 
and movements of the two parties, as the people on our northern and 
western borders. The causes of their quiet, as from long personal 
observation it seems to me, are three. It is well that they be pro- 
foundly regarded, for the double reason that they will be powerful for 
a long time to come, and because a certain stamp of popular feeling 
has forced the slave question into a position of undue pi-ominence and 
importance in this war. The slaves are in a position to create great 
uneasiness in the Southern mind, and so draw largely from their mili- 
tary force in the field ; and they have had the favorable opportunity to 
combine and rise in large sections and masses. But neither of these 
things have they done. The number of contrabands is exceedingly 
small, when we consider how many were abandoned of their masters, 
how many were intentionally permitted to become fugitives that they 
might act as spies, and how many more might have escaped if they 
had been inclined. But I referred to three causes of their quiet. 

THEY ARE POSSESSED OE ■SVOXDERFUL CONTENTMEXT BY XATURE. 

They have little of the uneasiness of English and French and 
Spanish blood. The idea of improvement is a very tardy one with 
the African. His wants are few and simple, and he does not live 
much in the past or the future. Good-natured, easy, indolent, he is 
averse to change, even for the better. Toil and struggle, specially 
dangerous struggle, he shrinks from. These are characteristics of the 
race, and they have been intensified by the degrading and iniquitous 
system of slavery under which they have been drilled and borne down 
for centuries. It is one of the curses of slavery, which we are slow to 
perceive, that it kills out the ambition, the spirit, the manhood of a 
race. It reduces the human and develops the animal qualities. Not 
that the Africans have not capacity. I think they have ; and I doubt 
not the tide will yet turn in the destinies of mankind, when Africa 
will fill a prominent place in the civil and social and moral geography 
of the world. 

THE COXmxiOX OE THE SLAVE IS MORE TOLERABLE THAN "VVE HAVE 
SLTPOSED. 

Particularly, I mean, in those features of his case by which he 
might be goaded to the desperate hazard of an insurrection. I ask 
attention to this distinction. His mental, moral, social and civil 



11 

degradation, we cannot probably over-estimate. It is beyond the reach 
of conception. No man, I tliink, learns throroughly to appreciate 
and hate slavery till he has lived in the miserable and terrible exhi- 
bitions of it. But this very degradation is in itself quieting. It 
manufactures an indifference to one's human destiny, except so far as 
the physical and the animal are concerned. But in these latter, the 
condition of the slave is more tolerable, I say, than we have supposed. 
The scant feeding, over-working, and bodily tortures are far less 
among the mass of slaves, than we have been taught to believe. We 
have not been in a mood to receive average and historical statements 
on these points. We have not allowed a fair statement of fact. It 
has not been popular to make it. It is not now a popular thing to 
correct our mistake. The romance of slavery, the thrilling fiction, 
Avith a few extreme facts wrought in, we have insisted should be 
taken as the candid history.* Here we have deceived ourselves, and 
the quiet of the slaves through all these opportunities to rise or 
escape, is showing us our mistake. And now our unwarranted de- 
pendence on them shows our mistake to be a most expensive one. 
The barbarism of slavery is not what rare cases and glowing rhetoric 
have taught us to believe. Had the physical sufferings of the slaves 
been what was popular belief of them here three years ago, no power, 
no hazard could have kept them from rising during the so tempting 
occasion of the last two years. The South would have been made as 
the valley of the sons of Hinnom, and the lamentation and mourning 
as at Hadadrimmon. Almost every one is surprised that the masters 
generally should have left their homes in the possession of their 
slaves, while they went to fill up, beyond our boldest estimates, the 
rebel ranks. How dare they? We do not like the explanation, 
because it so cuts in upon our theories, and lectures, and lyceum de- 
bates, and political projects. But the fact of two years' growth to us 
is, that the slaves, physically, were so comfortable and contented, it 
was safe for the masters to leave them alone with the women and 
children at home. Now, we must square our theories and adjust our 
anti-slavery to this new revelation of facts. We must attack the 
system on its mental and moral, and social and civil cui'ses. These 
are legion. The slave does not feel these, and is not uneasy. So he 
must be helped before he will help himself. Before he will rise, 
mental and moral, and social and civil forces must elevate him. 



* Probabl)' the complimentary alcove in the British Museum, devoted exclusively 
to English editions and foreign translations of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," has done 
more to create a public opinion concerning the condition of the slave, than all the 
facts we have been able to smuggle abroad. Thus, the case has gone before the 
foreign public, as "Fact versus Fiction," and Fiction has gained the verdict. We 
have had the same difficulty in the North to obtain a judgment on facts. 



12 



THE SLAVE SEES NO AVAY OF IlIPROVIXG HIS CONDITION BT A VIOLENT 
CHANGE IN IT. 

It is perfectly evident to us, and I think must be to the slave, that 
nobody wants him but the Southerner. The North gives him a cold 
hand at the best. The legislation of some of the free States is most 
violent and unjust towards him. Even our own State, with all her 
official and unofficial, and Faueuil Hall sympathy for the oppressed, 
cannot provide for five hundred contrabands through one winter. 

Looked on as a northern laborer and neighbor and citizen, the North 
is opposed to the negro, Eemoval from the country is out of the 
question, for any large portion of them. They must live and labor 
where they are. For whom shall they labor ? The present owners of 
southern soil. For to dispossess the owners of real estate in a popu- 
lation of eight millions, and constitute a new class of owners, is pre- 
posterous, absurd, impossible. Those slaves, if freed, must live among 
and labor for their present employers. 

But if they take their liberty violently, can they afterward live 
there peaceably ? Suppose we aid them in a servile insurrection and 
succeed, vast numbers of both masters and slaves must be slaugh- 
tered. Can we afterward make the bloody remnants of the two 
parties settle down happily and profitably together ? Such a scheme 
is the wildest dream. 

The untutored negro has good sense enough to comprehend this, 
and so is quiet. And he will remain so. The first day of January 
will be the same as the last day of December to him. True, he is in 
a terrible condition. Yet, so far as he can see, his master is the one 
whose good-will he should think the most of, as a matter of policy. 
He sees no way in which he can change his condition for the better. 
And we would be sensible, if we could pause in our thirty years' 
talking long enough to do a little practical thinking, that we have as 
yet proposed no practicable plan by which the negroes can improve 
their condition. To free them by their insurrection and our bayonets 
is possible ; but it would sacrifice a large proportion of them, and 
the most of their more promising ones.* It would leave the survivors 
simply freed, without a country, without a policy of living, and with- 
out friends except the North, who have always given them the cold 
hand, when it has descended from theory to practice. 

I know it is said that they can support themselves, because by their 
labor they have supported and enriched the South. But they have 



* Since these lines were writ'.en, a Confederate Proclamation has foreshadowed the 
very thing I have here said. It has ordered that all slaves captured with arms in 
their hands shall be put to death. 



13 

done it under management. The labor of the Lowell and Lawrence 
operatives has built those cities. But how long will those cities 
thrive, or live, or give those operatives a living, if all the corporations 
dissolve, and the members withdraw from the business and places ? 
In a very brief time but two things would remain there ; poverty- 
very distressing, and a water power. 

I agree that, under management, the South would tlirive much 
better under the free labor of its present slaves. But the practical 
difficulty, under present pressure, is to make a forced and bloody 
separation between masters and slaves, and a forced change from 
slave to free labor, and afterward provide the management of the 
freed laborers. Shall Ave change the present owners into future man- 
agers ? What ! by an insurrectionary and war process, under the 
direction of our Government ? It is absurd. Peaceably we might ; 
but by force, never. Shall we establish a system of Government 
managers for counties and plantations, and for the city and family 
services of the freed blacks ? And by this shall the former owners 
of the slaves and the continued owners of the real estate, in the 
chafed and hostile mood in which the bloody revolution of the entire 
system must inevitably leave them, become the managers ? No 
Government, short of the sternest military despotism, could do this. 
Shall we dispossess all the rebel owners of Southern property, and 
by Government sale introduce there new owners, that will favor and 
attempt to carry out this new scheme ? In other words, shall we 
kill and crush and dispossess and disfranchise and drive into exile 
the larger part of eight millions of free whites ? The thing is 
impossible, inhuman, and unchristian. It is worthy of the days of 
Tamerlane, the Saracens, or the French Revolution. The Christian 
world would not and ought not to allow it. Yet forced and sudden 
and general emancipation, must mean something like what I have 
indicated, if indeed its advocates have any definite plan beyond the 
simple freeing of the slaves. 

All these things the slaves comprehend, more or less ; and nothing 
hopeful opens to them. They can see nothing to be had by violence, 
better than their present condition affords, awful as it is. So they are 
quiet, and will remain so, in advance of our army. 

That the leading rebels deserve some of these terrible inflictions, as 
exile, disfranchisement, poverty or death, I cordially agree. But the 
policy of punishment is one thing ; the policy of the restoration of the 
Government, and peace and prosperity afterward, is another thing. 

So have the experiences of the year and of the war been teaching 
us their lessons. We must be dull scholars, in a most expensive 
school, if we are not wiser. What, then, are some of our Coxclu- 

SIONS ? 



u 



BUT LITTLE FOREIGN AID OR SYMPATHY FUOM FOREIGN ANTI-SLAVERY. 

Foreign anti-slavery is no such practical sentiment as to oppose the 
South as fighting for a slave oligarcliy, and favor us as standing for 
free labor. It Avas a cheap philanthropy for the slave, and cheap 
slurring our country for having an odious institution that England 
forced on us, till cotton rose and spindles stopped, and half-paid 
operatives fdled their poor-houses. As cotton went up, their negro 
philanthropy went down. For a foreign power who thought our 
nation was becoming too large and too influential, it was a good thing 
to press this anti-slavery wedge between the North and the South. 
But when we pipe, they do not dance ; and when we mourn, they do 
not lament. Nothing will please them but disunion ; which with 
them means weakness and wasting — a beautiful vase broken into a 
thousand fragments, under the tramping of the nations as they ride 
over us. 

This, then, is one of our conclusions. We are learning who our 
nei"-hbors are. The Priest and the Levite have passed by. Russia 
makes us think of, and look for, the Samaritan. 

NO VOLUNTARY AID FROM THE SLAVES BEYOND THE LINE OF OUR 
ARMY. 

For, reasoning from the past, their condition must be doubtful within 
the circle of Northern sympathy and control. We do not yet tempt 
them with sufficient and certain prospects. Then they are not an 
uneasy, ambitious and warlike race. The camp and battle-field have 
but little attraction for them. If they rise, they foresee the certainty 
of death for the most of the leading ones. If an insurrection and 
union Avith us succeed, they cannot see how it is possible for them to 
settle down, as they prefer and must, among their old homes, while 
the remnants of families that they had partly destroyed, are neighbors, 
employers, and rulers over them. And so as to those beyond the 
line of our military poAver, we must not expect they will come to our 
aid. And being exceedingly doubtful how the Avar Avill end, they 
will not shoAV uneasiness enough to keep their masters from the ranks 
of the rebel army. The slaves, as a body, Avill not aid us till such 
time as their service will be of but little use to us. As one of the 
rights of Avar we might, if Ave could, make them uneasy, and so draAv 
home the rebel army. But Avhat I claim as fact is, that Ave cannot 
do it. We cannot offer the slave suincient and certain gain for it. 

WE MUST TREAT THE SLAVES OF THE REBELS, AVHEN IN OUR POS- 
SESSION, AS ANT OTHER FORCE OR MATERIAL OF AVAR. 

Turn them as captured guns on the enemy. A rebel, by position 
and act, has forfeited all property, and it may laAvfuUy become ours. 



15 

The forfeiture of all movable and jjcrsoiuil property, as provisions, 
and other army supplies, stocks, horses, negroes and what not, should 
be perpetual. His real estate, after being cleaned of every thing 
usable by us, should be secured to his heirs. This, partly as justice, 
and partly in policy for the peace of coming generations. "While the 
slaves, as any other interest of the rebels, are left to the chances of 
war, every endeavor lawful in war should be used to bring them 
within our lines. Then they should be no more returned than a cap- 
tured cannon or a sack of wheat. 

EMANCIPATION AS A LEADING POLICY AND END IN THE WAR, MUST 
CONSOLIDATE AND STRENGTHEN THE SOUTH. 

For no one issue will unite them like this. They see, as Ave must, 
that a forced emancipation is the utter breaking up of Southern society. 
It means the destruction, to a great extent, of State constitutions and 
statutes, and municipal laws. It is resolving society there into its 
territorial state, and putting it under the laws and management of 
Congress as one of the territories. And it was a clear, far-reaching 
and wide-sweeping proposal made in the Senate a year ago, to reduce 
all the rebel States to the condition and hold them as a territory. The 
good sense of the Senate recoiled from so revolutionary a process, and 
rejected the bill. But the South understand that this is their doom in 
the emancipation process. Of course it makes them a unit in resist- 
ance. It develops and unites with a fearful intensity all their energies. 
And this will explain a fact that is constantly surprising us, that when- 
ever we meet them their ranks are full, united, well officered, well fed, 
fairly clothed, well equipped and terribly in earnest. So is our eman- 
cipation policy impotent among the blacks, but most potent among the 
whites, of the South. 

EMANCIPATION WHEN PROCLAIMED AND MADE UNALTERABLE FOR ANY 
REBEL TERRITORY, WILL LEAVE NO TEMPTATION TO LOYALTY AND 
PEACE. 

No permission, no bonus is offered for loyalty. Rebellion after that 
day is the unpardonable sin, and hath never forgiveness. A party for 
the Government can never be started for that district. We cannot 
adopt the good policy — " Divide and conquer." If they give up, they 
lose ; if they fight on, it is no worse. There is no gain in repentance — 
no loss in continued sinning. Must not such a policy protract the war 
exceedingly, if not indefinitely ? With an area of territory equal to 
our own, fruitful, and rich in all the staples of national wealth, will not 
six or eight millions of whites, and three or four millions of blacks, 
consolidated in it, and familiar with all the vantage ground in it, 



16 

extend this war from sixty days to ten years ? With such a policy, I 
fear that our present sacrifices of wealth and men and life, will prove 
but as the first sheaf in a wide harvest-field. While it becomes me to 
criticise with great self-distrust and hesitation a policy so popular, I 
cannot refrain from expressing the opinion, worthless though it may 
be, that our work would be shorter and vastly more economical of 
precious life, if we would proclaim the loss of all property to rebels 
whom we overpower on the line of tlie army, and the saving of all to 
those who yield before we come up with them. 

EMANCIPATION BY INSURRECTION AND THE BAYONET MUST SACRIFICE 
MUCH OF THAT GOOD WHICH FOR THIRTY Y'EARS WE HAVE BEEN 
LABORING TO CONFER ON THE SLAVE. 

In forcing their bonds many of them must perish, while the sur- 
vivors are left to settle down among an exasperated people with whom 
they have had a bloody and victorious struggle. This is no hopeful 
state of things for the freed man. It will be another depressing and 
mournful fact in the very bitter and sad history of the African. The 
great fact is, and I can but name it and pass on, the terrible evils of 
slavery are moral evils, and moral causes must remove them. It is not 
the province of the sword to do it, if they are still to dwell among 
their former masters. 

WE SEE THAT THE GREAT QUESTION CONCERNING THE COLORED MAN 
IN THIS COUNTRY HAS NOT YET BEEN GRAPPLED AVITH. 

The great question so far has been. What shall be done with sla- 
very ? But there is a vastly greater question : What shall be done 
with the free 7iegro? It has been easy to answer the former and say. 
Abolish it. This was the only safe and Christian answer that could 
be given. Slavery was an enormity and an iniquity that must cease, 
yet under economical and moral forces, in their time of working. But 
if abolition is to be compelled, by military force, with no moral prep- 
aration in either party, or willingness in the master, and the two still 
be left together on some kind of equality, and in mutual dependence, the 
question, AVhat shall be done with the freed negro, assumes a stu- 
pendous importance. No temporal question in this country equals it. 
Its dilliculties are fearful. The talking men do not approach them. 
Philanthropy does not anticipate and propound and grapple with them. 
They do not seem to be thought of. And this question is forced on 
me : Will American anti-slavery fail the poor African in his hour of 
need, as English anti-slavery has ? I am not willing to believe that 
failure is an essential element in anti-slavery, as soon as there is a 
chance for it to become practical. I have more faith in the gospel. 



17 

That practical opportunity, as it seems to me, we had when this rebel- 
lion opened. By striking simply and singly at rebellion, with the 
entire force of the nation, we could have crushed it. And while we 
said no more of slaves than of any creature or thing that the rebels 
used against us, but converted all against them as fast as we gained 
possession, slavery would have been smitten with a deadly blow. 
Under the chances of war, and forfeit Avhen touched by the rights of 
war, it could not long have survived the death of its great ally, the 
rebellion. Ostensibly started in the interests of slavery, the suppres- 
sion of the revolt must have resulted in the overthrow of this system of 
evils and sorrows. I hope the opportunity is not yet lost. If the 
nation will return to its legitimate purpose, to put down the rebellion, 
we may yet save the nation, and at the same time inflict a mortal 
blow on slavery, and keep it within our reach for others and the final 
one, when the highest good Avill warrant. But if we persist in mak- 
ing emancipation the main issue, I fear much the result will be, a 
short life to our nation and a long one to slavery. In our theoretical 
and political strategy the monster may elude our grasp, and through 
the gap of disunion, escape to more southern and wider fields, for the 
devastation of newly conquered states, stretching away from the Rio 
Grande to the equator. 

But I weary you. I never gave an address more reluctantly. 
Nothing but a stern sense of duty could compel me to it. For Aveeks 
I have struggled against the public utterance of these views. I com- 
fort myself, however, with the hope that I am in the advance of a bet- 
ter public sentiment. Failing in this hope, I comfort myself with the 
fear, (if indeed there can be any consolation in a fear,) that the 
mournful failure of the now popular policy, and so the failure of the 
Government to suppress the rebellion, will prove that I was right. 

We must await the issue under an overruling and all-wise God. 

Do you ask what, in the mean time, I would do ? Sustain the 
Government by granting all it demands, and with all the cordiality I 
can muster. Because I am hopeless of a measure, I may not leave 
the Government helpless. I would press this war to the last extrem- 
ity, under the lead of the Government. I would yield no foot of our 
soil. I believe there is no need of it. I would settle with no armed 
rebel. I would not mutilate the Constitution. I want all our Consti- 
tution, and all our territory, and all our citizens whom the sword may 
spare and justice pardon. I think it is right to fight for this, under 
the direction of the Government. I believe God will bless us in thus 
fighting for "the powers that be," and that " ax-e ordained of" him. 
If we blunder in not keeping our eye single to make a permanent 
destruction of rebellion only, letting all other interests and issues 



IS 

take the chances of war, I trust him to overrule our mistake. Aud I 
would press the Avar earnestly, as I do these views, under the deep and 
solemn conviction, that in pressing the war and the views, I am dis- 
charging one of the highest duties of practical Christianity. For if 
we fail in this struggle aud allow dismemberment, it will be a failure 
for Christianity and civilization, such as the world ucver saw. 



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